1 . Protect the night sky

As a nature photographer, stars have always been one of my favourite elements in the photos. They offer an connection to a universe that is mysterious and grand, connecting our earthly lives to the heavens. Since the earliest recorded history, the night sky has sparked our imaginations and become deeply rooted in our cultures, traditions, artwork, and in later years, has inspired the development of technology with the hope of reaching beyond our blue planet.

With the development of the industrial (工业的) world, though, we have begun to lose the clarity (清晰) that thousands of generations of people and wildlife before us have enjoyed. Because of excesssive (过度) use of lighting, stars have become fainter (模糊的). For photographers hoping to capture the magic of the night sky, they must seek new places. Dark places are far from the reach of a city, and those place are becoming harder and harder to find.

Thanks to conservation groups, led by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), we have an opportunity to improve our night skies and recapture ancient magic. By holding the International Dark-Sky week, a yearly celebration of the night sky, the IDA is helping cities, communities and families do their part in helping make skies darker. Dark skies benefit more than just nature photographers; they are important to many wildlife species that also depend on them.

Here are some simple steps we all can do that are easy and inexpensive:

* Change your light bulbs to a dark-sky-friendly color, the closer the light is similar to “firelight” and the further it is away from a blue or white color, the better it is for the environment.

* Use a light fixture that channels the light down and instead of wide and open.

* Turn your lights off before bed!

1. Why does the author prefer photographing stars so much?

A．They inspire the author to learn cultures and art.

B．They are often paid little attention to by most people.

C．They are hardly seen due to the industrial development.

D．They build a close relation between universe and humans.

2. How can photographers get a satisfying photo of the night sky?

A．By looking for places without light.

B．By turning to government for help

C．By avoiding using any light bulbs.

D．By promoting industrial development

3. What can we infer from passage?

A．Blue and white are the dark-sky-friendly colors.

B．Many species of wildlife depend on dark skies.

C．Little efforts are needed to protect the night sky.

D．Joint efforts are needed to regain the darker sky.

4. What is the author's writing purpose?

A．To highlight the value of protecting the night sky.

B．To inform people of the current situation of night sky.

C．To call on people to take action to protect the night sky

D．To show author's great concern for the use of lighting

2 . Facebook announced today that it exceeded ( 超越) one of its biggest environmental goals: it managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 94 percent in 2020. It had previously promised to cut planet-heating emissions by 75 percent. The company said that it had also achieved its goal of “net zero emissions”.

Facebook also announced that it had achieved another goal: it now purchases enough renewable energy to cover 100 percent of its global operations, which includes its offices and data centers. But that doesn’t mean that all of its operations are actually powered by renewables like solar and wind energy—at least not yet.

Renewable energy is on the rise, but most electricity grids (电网) still rely on fossil fuels. When companies can’t purchase enough renewable energy from utilities because there isn’t enough supply, they buy renewable energy certificates that signal that the company invested in renewable energy projects somewhere. Those projects can be located anywhere, and certificates have been sold for so cheap that experts say they don’t really lead to more renewable energy production. Facebook also relies on renewable energy certificates, but it focuses on signing long-term contracts to support the construction of new solar and wind developments in the same places where it operates. I’s invested in 63 new renewable energy projects located on the same electrical grids as its data centers.

Facebook has recently also tried to limit misinformation about climate change on its platform. Last year, it launched a “Climate Science Information Center” in some countries. In the UK this year, it started adding a label to some posts about climate change that redirect people to its information center.It all comes on the heels of criticism from activists and policymakers over how misinformation about climate change festered on the site, including one famous case of Facebook reversing(撤销) a “false” rating that its fact -checkers gave based on inaccurate information.

1. W hat achievement did Facebook gain recently?

A．It totally used solar and wind energy for its operations.

B．It cut down its climate pollution more than planned.

C．It reached its goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions.

D．It invested a new renewable energy project.

2. How do the experts respond to the renewable energy certificate?

A．They pay little attention to it.

B．They have become bored with it.

C．They think it is a waste of money.

D．They think it brings little actual benefit.

3. Which can best take the place of the underlined word “festered” in paragraph 4?

A．Recognized.

B．Exchanged.

C．Worsened.

D．Decreased.

4. Which of the following can be a best title for the text?

A．Facebook hit several key climate goals

B．Take action to prevent climate change

C．Renewable energy is mankind’s hope

D．Say no to greenhouse gas emissions

3 . 阅读下面材料,在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式。

On the day the tornado hit, there was no sign that the fierce weather was on its way—the sky was blue and the sun had been out. Soon the tornado was on top of us. It was the     1     (loud) thing I had ever heard. The house was shaking, and the power went out. And the wind     2    (begin) to roar(咆哮) through the house. Everything was moving. My husband and I must reach the storeroom(储存室) on the first floor     3    (keep) us safe relatively. When we finally reached the last flight of     4    (step), our front door was blown open. Suddenly, a three-foot-long tree branch(树枝) flew over our heads,     5    (miss) us by inches(短距离). By the time I reached the storeroom, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. My husband pushed me down to the storeroom floor,     6     he couldn’t get inside himself because     7     the wind. I held his arm as the tornado blew the door open. All of     8     sudden, his feet stayed off the ground. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. I couldn’t believe it was over. Our neighbor said the storm caused serious damage,     9     lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses     10     (destroy). Luckily, none of us were seriously injured.

4 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

Hank was a two-year-old cat. Hank’s big adventure started last November 6. Delores Bushong, his 75-year-old owner, had just returned from a market when she realized Hank didn’t come in for his snacks. She called his name in the streets around her home. Then she heard something. She looked up and spotted Hank on a branch near the top of a neighbor’s tree.

Bushong believed Hank came out through a fence’s cracks (缝隙) and then became scared by some dogs. The more scared he got, the higher he climbed. “Cats have an amazing ability to climb up trees, but actually they aren’t good at climbing down,” said Dan D’Eramo, director of the Humane Rescue Alliance (HRA).

Bushong, worried about Hank, asked the HRA to help her. HRA called the fire department, but the tree’s branches weren’t stable enough to support a climb. And the position of the tree made a firetruck ladder useless. Then Bushong called a construction company to rent scaffolding (脚手架) but was told she should book the equipment 10 days in advance. Bushong was upset. “It is frustrating to realize something you love is in trouble but you personally can’t do anything about it,” she said.

To her delight, the neighbors came to help. Ed Baptiste, whose tree Hank had climbed, let Bushong sit in his backyard and called to Hank. One neighbor called a local business, EJ’s Pest Control, which had a tall ladder. Unfortunately, the 42-foot ladder proved too short. Another neighbor donated a can of fish, hoping it might attract the hungry cat to come down. Nearby dog owners took their pets away on walks instead of letting them out in their yards to avoid further frightening Hank.

By the fifth day, nothing had worked. That’s when Robert, a veterinary (兽医) assistant at HRA, came up with an idea. He asked Bushong to fill a special bag with some of Hank’s favorite things: cat food and a soft blanket. They called it Hank’s party pack. Robert wanted to save Hank with it.

注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

Then Robert tied the pack to a long bamboo pole.

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Bushong told the kind acts to a local newspaper office.

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7 . Sophia Gholz is an award-winning children's book author, music lover. and magic seeker. Sophia enjoys writing fiction with humor and heart. When writing nonfiction, she pulls on her love of science and her family background in ecology.

Her book, The Boy Who Grew a Forest, shares the true story of Jadav Payeng, a man in India who single- bandedly planted an entire forest over the course of his lifetime. When he was younger, Jadav Payeng was shocked by the destruction of his island home. So he took matters into his own bands and began planting one seed at a time. Jadav's forest is now over 1300 acres and provides a home to many animals, some endangered. Jadav is still planting today and his hard work has now been celebrated around the world.

To write this story, Sophia got to know more about Jadav Payeng and his forest through a documentary film called Forest Man. Influenced by her father, a forest ecologist and a scientist, she grew up learning about the importance of trees and the natural world. When she heard about a man on a m1ssion to reforest an entire island on his own, she was drawn to this story.

As for research, most of her research was done online. She read every news article that she could find about Jadav and listened to every interview. Then she reached out to several people who had met or interviewed Jadav as well, including the producer of his short documentary film.

She hopes that The Boy Who Grew a Forest lights a spark in everyone who reads it to go out and care for our beautiful planet. She'd love young readers to be inspired to plant or to learn more about animal habitats, biodiversity and science in general.

1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?

A．A story on how to plant trees.	B．Endangered animals in the forest.
C．Destruction of Jadav's island home.	D．A book introducing a tree- planting hero.

2. What do we know about Jadav Payeng ?

A．He has quit planting recently.	B．He is known to many people. .
C．He was an actor of Forest Man.	D．He planted trees with his family.

3. Which words can best describe Jadav Payeng?

A．Humorous and skilled.	B．Creative and outgoing.
C．Determined and diligent.	D．Controversia1 and helpful.

4. What's the purpose of writing The Boy Who Grew a Forest?

A．To encourage research on wildlife.	B．To describe a boy's farming experience.
C．To stress the importance of planting trees.	D．To advocate the action to protect the earth.

9 . Any parent of growing teenagers knows their kids’ appetite (食欲) can be extremely large. Now, imagine having a young dinosaur checking the fridge. The out size appetites of growing dinosaurs reshaped food chains in their environment and crowded out other carnivores (食肉动物), according to a new study.

Most groups of animals have many small-sized species, somewhat fewer medium-sized species and the fewest large-sized species. However, the extinct dinosaurs—especially carnivores had plenty of species no bigger than modern-day chickens and also many extremely big species, but few medium-sized ones.

Scientists wondered whether teen dinosaurs crowded out medium-sized adults by taking advantage of the habitats and food sources those species might have taken. To test the idea, Katlin Schroeder, a Ph. D. student at the University of New Mexico (UNM), combed a global collection of data to determine the size of more than 550 dinosaur species in 43 ancient ecosystems.

“In most communities, plant-eating dinosaurs were in multifarious sizes. But carnivores were completely different,” Schroeder says. Plant-eating dinosaurs came in a range of sizes, while carnivorous dinosaurs between 100 and 1, 000 kilograms were quite rare. “The size of the carnivorous dinosaur is surprising. It’s as if you went to the savanna, a large flat area of grassy land, and saw nothing in size between a small fox and a lion,” Schroeder says. “Patterns in all the dinosaur communities studied are very similar. We saw the gap in species’ sizes for years, but never measured it.”

Schroeder and paleontologists Eelisa Smith of UNM and Kathleen Lyons of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, modeled the role that young carnivorous dinosaurs might have played in ecosystems. “If the teen dinosaurs are really using up this space, how many of them would you expect?” Smith says. Their study showed that “the teenagers fill the gap,” she says. “If you fill them in, then you get a community that looks like what you’d expect.”

“The effect maybe stronger in meat eaters because each carnivorous dinosaur species hatched (孵化) from small eggs; then they grew very quickly. They had to change diets and hunting methods to adapt to their new sizes and compete with a range of other species along the way,” Erickson, another scientist, says.

“The study’s stress on how animals’ niches (生态位) can change as they grow offers fresh understandings,” says Mike Benton, a scientist at the University of Bristol.

1. How does the author bring up the topic of the text?

A．By showing an example.	B．By making a comparison.
C．By starting a discussion.	D．By offering an explanation.

2. What confuses scientists about the extinct dinosaurs?

A．Whether they lived in large communities.

B．Why young dinosaurs had out size appetites.

C．Why there were fewer medium-sized species.

D．How they adapted to the environment change.

3. What does the underlined word “multifarious” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Similar.

B．Large.

C．Reasonable.

D．Various.

4. What does Erickson want to stress in the last but one paragraph?

A．The impact of carnivorous dinosaurs’ appetite on their sizes.

B．The competitive living environment of carnivorous dinosaurs.

C．The relation between food variety and dinosaurs’ survival ability.

D．The role of eating habits in carnivorous dinosaurs’ hunting methods.

10 . On the beaches of southwest France, it is likely you will see sea birds flying through the sky. There may be sea lions lying on the sand. There will always be surfers in the waves and people walking their dogs on the beach. You might not expect to see a camel (骆驼) walking along, carrying big bags of trash on its back, but that is what’s happening on the beaches north of Biarritz.

Franck Doens and his camel Dino carry out a rubbish-collection project supported by volunteers. The volunteers walk up and down the golden sand collecting the rubbish that ends up on the beach. When their bag is full, they drop the waste into the big bags carried by Dino.

The organization that Franck founded uses rescued camels and local volunteers to clean up the beaches in this part of France. Dino was born in a circus (马戏团) and Franck knows he is much happier now, either in the fields of the farm at home or working on the beach.

“We’ve been working on this project for three years. I’ve been living here for 40 years and we can see a difference in the origins of the waste.” He says his project is to reduce pollution and rubbish as well as to support rescued animals.

As we look around the sparkling sand and the shining sea under a cloudless sky, the picture is almost perfect. Almost, because Franck warns that picture-postcard beaches do not exist – there are too many microparticles of plastic in the sand for that.

“Today, we manage to quantify the pollution on the shore by rubbish collections like ours,” said Franck. “But we still don’t know what's left in the ocean. The worst is yet to come.”

1. What makes the beaches north of Biarritz special?

A．Sea lions resting on the beach.	B．The surfers in the waves.
C．Camel walking with a trash bag.	D．Sea birds flying over the sky.

2. What do we know about the camel Dino?

A．He was born at a farm.	B．He was rescued from a circus.
C．He enjoyed his life in a circus.	D．He used to work for Franck’s farm.

3. Which of the following can describe Franck’s project?

A．Never too old to learn.	B．Seeing is believing.
C．Kill two birds with one stone.	D．Failure is the mother of success.

4. What can we infer from Franck’s words in the last paragraph?

A．He is concerned about the future of the ocean.

B．There are rubbish collections deep in the ocean.

C．He has confidence to solve the problem of sea pollution.

D．It is not their responsibility to collect rubbish in the sea.